Online study demand surges in wake of coronavirus outbreak

During the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak in China, all schools were closed, forcing students to study from home and bringing about a surge in demand for online education resources.

Zhangmen, a domestic provider of online tutorials for students aged 3-18, took the opportunity in hand and upgraded its network to cope with the extra demand. It also developed more diversified courses covering skills such as diary writing, critical thinking and psychology.

A special online community was set up for members to share experiences in parenting as family members spent more time together. It also called on teachers to resume work as soon as possible. The company now has about 40 million registered users.

A staff member surnamed Jiang teaches one-to-one courses for middle school students on Zhangmen. She said her workload has significantly increased. "According to the schedule, I didn't even have any spare time each day," she said. "But it also showed trust from parents."

The company said it offers tailored teaching services to students based on their knowledge background and local requirements for tests.

Jiang said she had a student from Wuhan, Hubei province, the hardest-hit region of the epidemic in China. After classes, she would sometimes chat with him to ease his anxiety.

Zhangmen has donated one-toone online courses valued at 20 million yuan ($2.81 million) for pupils and middle school students in Hubei, and online small-class courses valued at 20 million yuan for children aged 3-10 in the province. It has also offered free online psychological counseling for students and their parents during difficult times.

Advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence and big data, have been used to give real-time feedback to parents about how the classes are going. The technology can be used to form a report that includes student's performance, motivation, progress and comprehensive capability. It is also used for teachers to evaluate and adjust teaching methods.

Many users of online education platforms complain that they struggle when online traffic peaks. Wang Cheng, a technician of Zhangmen, said he once had to monitor the system at all hours of the day.

The company said an emergency response system has been established to solve any problem around the stability of online connections.

Online educational institutions were the No 1 choice of students and parents as a result of the epidemic, and have their advantages over offline teaching in terms of breaking the limitation of space and time, according to a report of iMedia Research in February.

Development is expected to grow substantially in China with increasing demand, which may bring about market giants in the sector, it showed.

Zhangmen is seeing huge demand in the long run. The company announced in March that it was recruiting more than 15,000 standard employees and about 100 employees at senior and high-level managing posts. The vacancies cover teaching, research, IT, product design and market operation. Of these, 6,000 vacancies are provided for job seekers in Hubei.

Zhang Yi, CEO of the company, said: "Professionals are the core competitiveness for online education companies, so we emphasize the importance of human resources, in a bid to boost development and offer better learning experiences."